


pillars

by towine (snippetcee)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Non-Graphic Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 10:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snippetcee/pseuds/towine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the little things that he craves the most these days, here in the landfill where Armin can’t remember what it feels like to have a full stomach, or to be warm, or to sleep on an actual bed. He is weak and tired, so tired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pillars

**Author's Note:**

> for [this prompt](http://towine.tumblr.com/post/60033392272/this-is-basically-shiganshina-ot3-with-a-focus-on) on tumblr. warning for minor depiction of violence against a child. it's brief, but i'm warning just in case.
> 
> thanks for reading!

When Armin thinks of home, he finds himself missing many of the little things. The creaky floorboard just outside his room that he steps on every morning on his way out. The dusty pile of books he keeps under his bed. The softness of his pillow.

He misses all these things. He misses his grandfather, too, and his parents. Those are obvious, though - of course Armin misses them like he misses a piece of his soul.

But the little things are what he craves the most these days, here in the landfill where Armin can’t remember what it feels like to have a full stomach, or to be warm, or to sleep on an actual bed. He is weak and tired, so tired.

They’re all exhausted - him, Mikasa, and Eren. Work on the landfill is grueling and no sympathy is spared for children like them. The refugees are treated only marginally better than garbage, and every day Eren’s temper gets shorter and shorter, a fuse lighting at the smallest spark. He fights with the soldiers supervising them, spitting in their direction when they sneer at the “outer wall filth” taking what is “rightfully theirs.” As if they don’t deserve food or shelter or kindness after all they’ve suffered.

Eren has always been easy to anger, but Armin had thought that, between him and Mikasa, Eren would also be easy to soothe.

The housing provided in the landfill is little more than ramshackle storehouses falling apart and filled to the brim with people. At night, you're lucky if you have space enough to lie down on the threadbare blanket given to you. The three of them aren’t. Usually, they huddle against a wall clutching each other close, trying to capture whatever warmth and sleep they can. It is never enough, nothing is ever enough here.

It had been a hard day’s work on the fields. Their hands are blistered and aching from tilling hard, unyielding soil, and their meager rations did nothing to replenish their energy. Armin wants nothing more than to sleep for a long, long time.

Eren, though, is restless. Another argument with a soldier earlier that day had earned him a swift slap to the face, and Eren had spat out blood and was ready to send a kick in return before Armin intervened, giving the soldier a pleading apology and a promise that it wouldn’t happen again.

Armin has been doing a lot of that, lately. It never gets easier, for any of them.

As they sit down in their usual spot against one of the walls of the storehouse, Eren glares intensely at nothing, his fists clenching and unclenching, cheek red and swollen. Armin and Mikasa sit at either side of him, quiet, not knowing what to say or too tired to say anything.

Armin drapes their single blanket over their laps. They used to have three when each of them had been given one upon reaching the landfill, but they gave one to a woman whose child wouldn’t stop shivering (the child died not long after, and none of them felt the need to ask for the blanket back). The other one was stolen from right on top of them, gone when they woke up one morning.

Their remaining blanket didn’t provide much warmth, but they certainly weren’t going to discard it.

Eren is gripping it tightly with his fists, hard enough to look painful. Armin rests a hand over Eren’s, trying to be comforting, trying to get him to relax, impossible though it was these days.

Eren lets go of the blanket and turns to look at Armin. There are angry tears in his green eyes, and this never gets easier for Armin to endure, either. Eren’s smile is another memory on Armin’s very long list of things he misses.

“Try to sleep,” Armin whispers softly to him.

He looks away and down at the dirty storehouse floor. “I don’t need sleep,” he chews out, his jaw clenched. “I don’t need any of this, any of these - these _scumbags_ bossing us around. I always thought humanity sat around like cattle behind the walls, but here? Here we actually _are_ cattle to them. _Fuck_ this.”

Eren pulls his knees up and rests his folded arms on them, burying his face. His voice is muffled but Armin can hear his scathing tone.

“They’ve never seen one up close, never seen one _eat_. They don’t understand how terrifying the Titans are, they’re just worried about their food going into someone else’s mouth.”

Armin shoots Mikasa a helpless look, but she’s staring at the ground, most of her face covered by her red scarf. She’s silent, stony-faced.

He wants to cry. He’s just as frustrated, just as hurt as they are and Armin has never considered himself a strong person, always standing with the support of his two best friends on either side. But now, his two pillars are crumbling, struggling under the weight of cruel reality and all Armin can do is try to pick up the pieces.

“I’ll kill them all,” Eren whispers harshly. “All the Titans. Every single one.”

It’s a mantra he’s been muttering since the day their lives fell apart. Mikasa says nothing. Armin also says nothing.

Eventually, Eren’s whispering dissolves into silence. Armin watches his shoulders rise and fall with heavy breaths, and he thinks Eren has fallen asleep. He closes his eyes, trying to get whatever semblance of rest he can.

It doesn’t last long - he feels Eren shifting next to him, and Armin groggily opens his eyes.

When he hears the sound of a choked sob, Armin is awake instantly.

Eren’s shoulders are shaking, his face still buried in his arms. His breathing is hitched and Armin can hear muffled sniffling.

Eren hasn’t cried like this in a long time. The harsh conditions of the landfill hardened something within him, made him beat out any weakness that allowed tears. Armin should have known it was only a matter of time before the dam would crack and release.

He wraps his arms around Eren and holds tight, trying to keep the pieces together.

Eren cries harder, shaking even more violently and sucking in harsh breaths. Armin rubs his back soothingly, Eren’s sadness causing tears to gather in his own eyes. He hates seeing someone he loves suffer like this. He hates it.

“Please don’t cry,” Armin whispers weakly.

Eren turns, moving his arms away from his face so he can wrap them around Armin and embrace him, clinging to him desperately and burying his face in Armin’s neck.

He’s struggling to keep his sobs quiet. His voice cracks, “I… I’m sor-”

Armin shushes him gently. “Don’t say you’re sorry. Nothing is your fault, okay?”

Eren just lets out another low sob and presses himself closer.

Armin squeezes him tighter and says quietly, “Everything is so hard right now, I know. None of it is fair. No one deserves this. _You_ don’t deserve this.”

“You’ve been through so much, you and Mikasa both. I always… I always wonder what it would be like if I had never met you. If I would have stopped reading books, or if I would have abandoned the idea of a life outside the walls. I think I would have given up. But I didn’t.”

He can feel Eren’s trembling lessen, can feel his breathing begin to relax. Tears are still soaking into his shirt, but Eren is quieter now. “I didn’t give up thanks to you. I will always, always be grateful to you for that. And Mikasa, too.”

Armin slowly pulls away to look Eren in the face - his eyes are red from crying but even in the darkness of the storehouse, his irises shine bright and green. Armin cradles Eren’s face in his hands and uses his thumbs to wipe away the stray tears falling down his cheeks.

“A few more months. A few more months and we can leave this place, enlist in the military and start working for the sake of humanity. You’re one of the strongest people I know, always able to get back up and keep walking. I know you can do it now.”

Armin presses their foreheads together. “You can’t give up. I need you. I need you with me when we reach the ocean, right?”

Eren nods shakily, and Armin gives him a small smile. His tears have stopped and his breathing is calm and even. The worry and sadness squeezing Armin’s chest loosens. He knows there are still hard times ahead of them, but for now, there is sleep.

“Okay,” he whispers. He drops his hands from Eren’s face, running them comfortingly down his arms. “You should rest now, I’m sure you’re tired.”

Before Armin can move away, Eren pulls him close, hugging him one more time.

“Th… Thank you,” he mumbles, his voice hoarse.

Armin smiles and hugs him back. Over Eren’s shoulder, he looks and sees that Mikasa is awake, watching them over the edge of her scarf.

He keeps one arm around Eren and extends the other towards her, beckoning her forward. Eren turns around when he does this and, upon seeing Mikasa, reaches his arm out to her, too. She moves towards them with her eyes bright and glistening.

They fall asleep with their arms wrapped around each other, the blanket resting over all three of them.

When morning light begins to peek through the windows of the storehouse, Armin slowly blinks awake, turning his head to look sleepily at his friends resting beside him - the two most important people in his life. Armin smiles. For the first time since reaching the landfill, he feels warm.


End file.
